The six-member panel, which is working on steps for im proved monitoring of CSR spending done under the companies law, has been given more time to submit its final report.Chaired by former Home Secretary Anil Baijal, the panel has now been given time till September 22 to finalise its report. Initially, the committee's report was expected to be ready by August end.In a circular issued on Wednesday, the Corporate Affairs Ministry said the “committee has been granted extension of another one month with the approval of the Union Minister for Corporate Affairs to submit its report by September 22, 2015“.Under the Companies Act, 2013, certain class of profitable companies are required to shell out at least two per cent of their three-year average annual net profit towards CSR. The Economic Times, New Delhi, 18th Sept. 2015

India will resolve some pending tax disputes in the next few days through judicial or executive resolutions, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday, as he sought to reassure investors about the government’s investment-friendly policies.He, however, did not specify the disputes in question. “A number of tax disputes have been put to rest and we are trying over the next few days itself so that many others can be put to sleep, either by a judicial resolution or an executive resolution,” he told the India Economic Convention organized by India Foundation. The government announced earlier this month that it will amend the income-tax Act to exempt foreign portfolio investors from paying the minimum alternate tax (MAT), which was a sticking point with foreign investors and had threatened to turn into another long-drawn tax dispute between the government and foreign investors. The decision followed a report by the justice A.P. Shah committee that recommended exempting both foreign portfo…

Deliberations within home ministry at an advanced stage; new guidelines expected in the next two weeks The government plans to streamline the audit and registration of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving foreign funding, and is expected to come out with a new set of guidelines in the next fortnight. Deliberations within the home ministry as to how processes for NGOs, particularly those receiving foreign funds, can be simplified are at an advanced stage. The aim of the exercise is to ensure greater disintermediation of processes so that there is minimal contact with the bureaucracy. The government has been severely criticized for allegedly targeting NGOs, specially the ones receiving foreign funds. According to a senior home ministry official, one of the key changes in the revised guidelines will be that NGOs that do not receive any foreign funding in a particular fiscal year will not be required to file a certified copy of the auditors’ report with the ministry’s foreigners d…

Delhi High Court on Thursday said that Participatory Notes (PNotes) are not illegal and were regulated under the law. The ruling by a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva came while dismissing a PIL, which had claimed that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had wrongly made a statement that P-Notes were not illegal and sought action against him. The court passed the order after Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain told the bench that P-Notes are part of Offshore Derivative Instruments (ODI) which are issued by or on behalf of Foreign Portfolio In vestors (FPI) and are “generated, operated and destroyed“ outside India. The ASG also said that P-Notes were regulated instruments and placed before the court the Sebi (FPI) Regulations. After going through the regulations, the court ob served, “it appears that ODIs include P-Notes and such other instru ments which are entered into by FPIs in relation to securities listed or proposed to be listed in stock exchanges in I…

Those who have retired after a lifetime of defending the nation will get their dues without hurting the exchequer perhaps because those who hid their unaccounted wealth from the taxman have paid theirs. Business Standard has learnt from senior government sources that the three month- compliance window under the black money law could garner around Rs.20,000 crore, an amount without which implementation of one rank, one pension ( OROP) would have led to stretching of the Centre’s fiscal resources. With such proceeds expected through an imposition of 30 per cent tax, and a similar penalty on the value of unaccounted wealth or assets declared by anyone between July and September, the government may be able to stick to the fiscal deficit target of 3.9 per cent of the gross domestic product ( GDP), without cutting capital expenditure required to kickstart investments. “The black money compliance window could fetch the exchequer around Rs.20,000 crore. Without that additional amount, there cou…

In its Assembly session that began on Wednesday, the Rajasthan government is planning to push some industryfriendly amendments to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition ( Rehabilitation and Resettlement) Act, 2013. If it is able to amend the law inthecurrentsession, Rajasthan will become the first Bharatiya JanataParty( BJP)- ruledstateto change the central Act, after the Narendra Modi- led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre recently succumbed to opposition pressure and allowed its land ordinance to lapse. The state government had tried to amend the central Act last year, too. But BJP’s own legislators had stonewalled the RajasthanLandAcquisitionBill, 2014. This time, however, the statehopestobeabletoconvince itslegislators. The freshattempt comes after Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje recently announced at a NITI Aayog meeting of chief ministers, chaired by the prime minister, thathergovernmentwouldsoon enact its own land law. After oppositi…